BP Type II

Daily Log 10/31/04

Happy Halloween all. Most of the night has been taken up handing out candy. I'll resume the BLOGGING tomorrow.

The BP Diet

Well, here's the summary of my readings on the dietary concerns:

First and foremost eat a generally healthy diet and eat reasonable amounts, this avoids blood sugar spikes and lows, it also helps you avoid the natural depression that comes with being unhealthy and/or overweight.

Now the specifics.

Avoid processed sugar and caffeine. Both of them cause energy spikes and lows. These highs and lows can cause mini-cycles which can lead to bigger ones.

Avoid white flour when possible. Highly processed and refined flour is easily converted to sugar by the body (almost everything you eat is converted to one type of sugar or the other, but white flour is converted at a high rate). This process can cause the same types of highes and lows discussed above.

Finally, what to eat. Get your RDA of fruits and vegetables, that means at least 7 servings a day. It doesn't take long to get used to this, but the expense can get to you. Fresh fruits and vegies aren't cheap.

Daily Log 10/30/04

Had to head out of town for a family member's surprise birthday party. The party was a success and she had no clue that it had been set up.

Spent the morning around town with my sons while my wife did some volunteer work. We went on a nice walk and the boys split a blue berry muffin while I drank a short decaf. My wife surprised me with the new Scissor Sisters' CD. It's a great CD and I can confidently say that it has the best cover of a Pink Floyd song ever done by a gay disco band.

Daily Log 10/29/04

Sorry again for the pause in posting, had issues with the server and couldn't get much to upload, the problem seems to be fixed now.

Friday was an alright day. I am still having trouble concentrating at work, but I am getting a bit more done, I don't feel like I am hopelessly spinning my wheels (but I am still behind and need to work more efficiently.

Daily Log 10/28/04

I apologize for letting the BLOG lie dormant, I had to go out of town on business, but I am back now. I am hoping to get the promised dietary stuff up this evening.

I terms of what's going on now, things are alright, although I am still digging myself out of a tremendously deep hole here at work that my depression and I dug. I think I am catching up, but it’s very easy to let the amount of work I need to do depress me if I am not careful. Although I think this type of depression is just normal stress, not chemically induced.

I am still trying to figure out exactly what this illness means long term, while simultaneously trying to not let it affect every single aspect of my life. I don't want to look at everything from a bipolar perspective, or constantly wondering how my illness is coloring my perspective on the topic.

Diet

I had some requests for more info on the optimal BP diet. I am going to go through my books and hope to have something up on it by this weekend. Just remember a few things before you follow my advice:

1. I am not a doctor
2. I am not a nutritionist
3. I am not qualified to set up diets for anyone &
4. I am a diagnosed crazy person

With that in mind, if you still want to follow my advice on diets feel free. I'll have it up sometime this week.

Daily Log 10/25/2004

Well, today was my birthday and it was pretty much uneventful, which I liked. Birthdays after 30 really are non-events, I'm not excited about getting older like I once was, and I'm not upset about it either, I'm just aging gracefully.

The day was nice, my wife and I went shopping a couple of weeks ago for our birthdays, so she just gave me a card, which I really enjoyed, and my 2 year old sang something that resembled "Happy Birthday to You" (that may have been the highlight of my day).

It was another unremarkable day of stability. So I hope the BLOG doesn't get too tedious, but I’m trying to be accurate with what's going on, even if it makes for boring reading. I only cheated on my diet a little for my birthday. The folks at the office ordered a cake and I didn't want to look weird, so I had some. Plus my wife made an apple pie for me, but she used sugar in the raw instead of processed sugar so I was able to rationalize it as being good for me.

Fail Safe Systems

I wanted to pass along an additional thought I had regarding controlling BP. It's a concept used in designing aircraft: system redundancy. Basically, have back ups for everything. With depression comes the risk of doing nothing; with mania comes the risk of doing stupid, cruel, dangerous or harmful things in a spectacular way. In order to deal with this you have to do two things. First, find the meds that work for you, work with a psych and therapist and get yourself on an even keel. Once that step is done you can start planning your back ups.

Basically, I treat my manic and depressed selves as if they are separate people (only conceptually, I am not suffering delusions). Then I look at the various aspects of my life that are important to me, and I try to make sure that I have safeguards in effect so my manic and depressed selves can't screw everything up while I am checked out.

10/24/2004 Daily Log

Once again, good day. Plus I've returned to the work out routine with a vengeance. I really feel a lot better after a workout. However, I caution all BPs (or sufferers of any other effective disorder) against jogging. If you are battling anything unpleasant in your head, jogging gives you a lot of time to think, and sometimes that's not good. Every time I've tried jogging I've come back from a jog more screwed up than when I left. We bought an elliptical and its set up in the basement so I can workout and watch TV. Its perfect, I watch the news, sports or the History channel and go at it for half an hour. I follow that up with some push ups and sit ups.

I've also done a lot of reading on dietary issues with BP and come to some conclusions. Here's what you are supposed to avoid: partially hydrogenated oils, trans fatty acids, sugar and caffeine (oh, and the worst one to give up: alcohol). Here's what you are supposed to stock up on: omega 3 fatty acids, B-12, C, and tons of fruits and vegetables. At first blush it sounds horrible, but it’s not that bad, it actually kind of cool feeling as if doing battle with BP on a regular basis.

10/23/2004 Daily Log

Today was my wife's birthday, and it was great. We hung out with our kids, hung out at the house, and the got a babysitter and went to one of our favorite places for dinner. It really was a great day, sorry for not having a real heart wrenching story, but it was a nice, fun and pretty normal day.

I'm not sure if my hand tremors are getting better or if I'm just getting used to them. However, either way, they're bothering me a lot less. Plus, as an added bonus, I seem to be paying less and less attention to my little obsessions. I hope this doesn't destroy my readership, but things really are going well.

Sorry for the short post, but its hard get really introspective when your in a good mood.